PR life stories: Lord Chadlington

PRmoment founder Ben Smith recently interviewed Lord Chadlington as part of our series of one to one interviews with some of the most senior people in UK PR.

Lord Chadlington was born in 1942 and after a brief career in journalism he moved into public relations. He founded Shandwick in 1974. Lord Chadlington sold Shandwick in 1998 to Interpublic before starting Huntsworth in 2000.

Here is a taster of what we covered:

• What Lord Chadlington regrets about his time at Huntsworth
   
• Why David Cameron was right to call the referendum
   
• Why the Conservative party is not offering the electorate hope
   
• How young electorates across the world are breaking the right of the elite to govern
   
• Lord Chadlington’s future plans on the formation of the UK China Fund with David Cameron as its chairman and Lord Chadlington as it’s deputy chairman
   
• Why Weber Shandwick might never had happened if Lord Chadlington had not got hepatitis and been ill for 6 months
   
• Why he was “rubbish at journalism”
   
• Why he believes journalism and PR were pretty “crummy businesses” in the 1960s
   
• Why he started Shandwick
   
• Why he thinks he’s only become a really good PR person in the last few years
   
• How Shandwick grew so rapidly in the 1980s
   
• Where the name Shandwick came from
   
• Three things needed to build a PR firm
   
• Why Lord Chadlington sold Shandwick when he did
   
• Why Lord Chadlington’s interest in Huntsworth started as a jape (a practical joke!)
   
• How Shandwick grew internationally, fast
   
• Why Lord Chadlington decided to merge the various acquisitions into a single brand business
   
• Why Lord Chadlington never failed to be home on a Friday night